


whispers would deafen me now

by geekyandproud



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Canon-Typical Violence, Depressed Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Torture, Mental Health Issues, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, No Beta, Other, Ouch, Sad French Boy Hours are 24/7 in this house, We Die Like Men, hand removal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekyandproud/pseuds/geekyandproud
Summary: “Have a little faith, Book.”When left on the side of the Thames, Booker expects to spend the next century drowning his sorrows by himself. Returning to his flat in Paris though, it's only a matter of time before he's found by Dr. Kozak once again, who definitely won't be letting her key to the next Nobel prize slip away once again. With 99 years left to go before the others will even think to look for him, he knows that this is what he deserves.Of course though, the others aren't going to let him suffer, even if this is what he wanted. Cue a rescue mission, lots of comfort, and recovery from all manner of hurts.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is mostly complete, but with the later chapters needing some work so I'll be adding hopefully about a chapter a week. Tags will be updated as we go, but please let me know if you think I should have tagged something I haven't!
> 
> Kudos/comments etc. most welcome, please shout at me. This is my first foray into Old Guard fic though, please be kind (whilst you shout).
> 
> Title from "It's All So Incredibly Loud" by Glass Animals, a song about the split second after when you tell someone something that's going to change their life.

“Have a little faith, Book.”

He stands and watches the tide come in, the mucky water gently sloughing over the rocks on the shoreline. When the water starts to run close to his boots, he finally turns to leave; the Thames is much cleaner than it used to be, even though he never saw it at its worst, but that doesn’t mean it’s anything he wants near him. He takes a swig from his flask, ingrained habit rather than genuine need at this moment in time, and lets the burn settle in his stomach as he climbs the steps the others had disappeared up, hours ago now. He turns the corner, coming out on the street, ignoring the way he had thought they might still be there – impossibly, stupidly – still waiting for him because he can’t bear to be alone right now.

The old-but-not-by-their-standards pub, where his fate was decided, is in East London, where the pieces of history left behind are few and far between, pinched in between huge high-rise buildings and over-priced flats for over-worked people. He walks, aimlessly heading west with the intention of finding the next pub which will sell him a lot of alcohol, regardless of price, but his feet take him north again. It’s getting dark by now, a chill in the air catching at his clothes, his exposed wrists and neck, so he shoves his hands deeper in his pockets, walking faster to try to encourage some warmth into his body (he hates the cold, hates shivering with no reprieve. That first death was slow and painful, and he was cold for every goddamned second of it. And the months afterwards, before the others found him. And every single nightmare – fuck, he hates the cold.)

His feet eventually carry him to the train station though, and he decides in a snap to get on board. He has a falsified – but well falsified – French passport and enough cash to buy a one-way ticket, so in a few short minutes, he goes through the security checks and waits to board the Eurostar to Paris.

The countryside is dark when the train come out of the tunnel, and for that he’s grateful. There’s nothing to see through the window except his own reflection, made ghostly by the strip lighting in the train. His eyes are dark hollows, and the shadows exaggerate the features of his face until he looks like a death mask, empty and pale, but it’s better than seeing outside.

It’s late at night by the time he arrives, and the streets are quiet. He walks out of the station towards an apartment he has kept through the years – it’s where he had been, just a few weeks ago. Returning is dumb, knowing that this is where Copley found him the first time, but he traipses up the front steps anyway, wondering if he just tries hard enough, none of this will ever have happened.

He retrieves the keys from the locked box by the door and lets himself in. It’s mostly empty inside, a pile of books he doesn’t care for left by the couch, mildewy and dust-covered. There’s a few tins in the cupboard, and some old clothes in the wardrobe, but not much else. He thinks about showering, unearthing the bedding from the sealed bags under the bed. Instead, his tired legs carry him to the couch, and he half sits, half collapses into the cushions, a plume of dust rising up and making his nose itch.

He leans back, and thinks – in a few minutes. Just a few minutes. But the exhaustion starts to catch up with him – he hasn’t slept, not properly, not since before Marrakech. Well. Properly. What is properly? With Quynh screaming in his nightmares, he hasn’t slept through a night since 1812. Just drinking enough to stay unconscious for a while, a few hours at most, before he gags on saltwater and rust, waking up gasping for breath, heart pounding in time to the beat of Quynh’s fists against the iron. He thinks about Nile’s scared face, learning all of the worst parts of being immortal in her first few hours with them. Thinks about the immediate and intense sense of betrayal he’d felt when the others explain, calm and caring, what’s happening to her. The anger had bubbled up inside of him, short lived and furious, thinking about how Nile gets the three of them explaining and listening to her. Not Andy stalking away into the night, not Joe and Nicky turning to themselves for comfort – he was left to disguise the taste in his mouth by himself.

But.

He doesn’t get to talk about betrayal, now. The memory of that anger though is just that – a memory. It rattles inside his hollow chest, but he’s too tired, too disconsolate to breathe any life into it. Thinking about the others just brings him around to the pain on Andy’s face, as she bled out onto a carpet through a bullet wound he put there. The desperation with which Nicky and Joe held onto each other, when they finally got out, when they escaped from where he – Booker, their friend and brother – where he locked them up. He didn’t set off the gas that let them get captured, but he may as well have done.

All because he couldn’t see another way out of the hole he’d dug for himself, all because he let himself be led by the whispers – too stupid to realise they were the whispers of snakes, not friends.

**10 Months Ago**

“Mr Booker?”

Booker jerks, unused to speaking to anyone these days. It’s summer in Paris, the side streets stinking of piss and damp whilst the main streets are filled with tourists. The nightmares had woken him early this morning, too early, and his apartment is empty of alcohol, hence the supermarket visit. The shop is quiet, still too early for most people on a Saturday, and Booker itches to get out, get home, back to his isolation.

His reaction times are slow and sluggish, too hungover and sleep-deprived to readily focus on anything, and it takes him too long to realise that his current fake idea is under an entirely different name. There should be no connection between his true identity and the morose drunkard by the name of Louis Dubois he is currently pretending to be. He turns to see the man approaching him, and curses under his breath. It’s a familiar face – Compley – Copeley – Copley – Copley, that was it. A job, a few years again – Surabaya. An extraction the CIA didn’t think was possible, a job the four of them carried out with minimal complications (for them).

“Mr Booker. Good to see you again.” Copley says as he approaches, holding his hand out to shake, which Booker responds to after a brief delay, reluctantly letting go of the gun in his waistband.

“Mr Copley. What brings you to Paris?”

“You.” Booker watches him carefully, all too aware of how _public_ they were, how exposed he was. He knows the locations of all the escape routes, even a three-month collective hangover can’t still two hundred years of watchful habits, but in all honesty, it is too early for this shit. His head pounds and his stomach roils, but he’s used to pushing through discomfort, and so waits for Copley to elaborate, confident in his ability to run if this turns out for the worst. “I have a task for you. And your … friends.” Booker shakes his head, saying:

“Not interested. We don’t do repeats.” He turns to leave, already planning where to go next now someone has found him, now this city won’t be safe for another few decades – Lyon, maybe, or Toulouse.

“This is … a different sort of task.”

“You know what we’re good at. And like I said – we don’t do repeats. Goodbye.” Copley follows after him, still talking:

“Let me buy you breakfast. You’ll want to hear what I have to say.”

“That I doubt.”

“I’ve seen the proof, Mr Booker.” Anxiety ripples in Booker’s stomach, aware already where this conversation is probably going.

“You and your friends – you can’t die.” Copley looks certain in these facts he’s decided he knows, and Booker absentmindedly wonders where on earth he got his proof. The Surabaya job had been difficult, sure, but he doesn’t think any of them even died, in the end. And it’s easy to shrug off bullet wounds, after the fact – you didn’t see what you thought you saw, they say to mortals watching. That bullet missed, it was just a scratch – look, there’s still blood, but I’m fine now – all the usual lies. Ignoring the way their bones ache, their muscles burn, the phantom pain of regrowth staying with them for days, weeks after the fact. His head pounds with pre-emptive tiredness, beyond the strain he’s already under just being alive. None of that matters now though – he needs to dissuade Copley, destroy his research and maybe his life, then leave the city and disappear again.

“You think we can’t die? People who come back from the dead? You’ve been watching too much sci-fi, Mr Copley.” He keeps walking, out of the store and into the sweaty heat of the day, already oppressive at 9am, but Copley follows him as he walks down the street. Booker reflexively checks the rooftops for snipers, for some sign that this is a trap.

“I don’t think I have, Mr Booker. Look, I’ve already found you. This time.” Booker glances at him, frowning, unsure if he meant that as a threat or not, but Copley holds up his hands. “Sorry, I didn’t mean- I’m alone, I swear. Just, please, listen to what I have to say. Then you can leave, and if you want, our paths will never cross again. But please – let me explain.” Booker sighs, too sleep-deprived to deal with this right now, but he figures at the very least this buys him time, and he can always kill Copley afterwards. He nods his tired acceptance, then follows when Copley leads him to a busy café a few streets over. The waitress comes over almost immediately, and Copley gestures to him to order;

“Just coffee, thank you.” Copley then orders himself breakfast and coffee in near perfect French, which Booker can’t find the energy to be surprised by. Once she’s gone though, Booker can’t wait for Copley to muddle through his reasoning, and instead cuts to the chase:

“What the hell do you want? Even if what you think is true – which it’s not – what can you possibly hope to get out of this?” Copley.

“My wife – she got sick. ALS. She started tripping up all the time, not feeling her feet. Then she couldn’t hold things, her grip strength just disappeared. By the end – she couldn’t-” He stops, taking a deep breath, before carrying on; “She couldn’t breathe, by the end.

“But you – you will never suffer like that. How does it happen? How do you keep living, keep coming back, despite all odds? After she died, I … I dedicated myself to your work. You have a gift, Mr Booker.” At that, Booker snorts, forgetting he’s meant to be disproving Copley’s theory, but the need to express how much he doesn’t want this, has never wanted it, is too strong.

“A gift? No – immortality is a curse, not a gift. To live, forever, without reprieve? It is not the joy you think it is.”

“But the secret to how you do it, there must be a reason – a scientific reason, that explains why you always come back. My client believes his scientists can figure it out, and that needs to be shared with the world – we need you to share your gifts.” Booker thinks abstractedly that Copley has done his research well, because with his words, Booker is undone, adrift.

 _Why won’t you help me?!_ Jean-Pierre had screamed at him. _Why are you so selfish, why won’t you share?_ As if sharing was something he could do, as if he had any idea why his useless body refused to die – as if he wouldn’t give anything – everything - he had for his son to live, to not be alone in this world. He swallows, and hopes his face doesn’t betray the turmoil in his head. It’s been too long, but he stammers out a response anyway:

“And – your client, they think, they think they can work out how it happens?”

“They hope so, anyway.” Copley visibly perks up, now Booker is no longer actively doubting him, carrying on: “Merrick pharmaceuticals have some of the top scientists in the world looking into this. They want to cure degenerative illnesses, dementia, arthritis-“

“ALS?” Booker asks, deliberately pushing, but Copley only smiles, tinged with sadness.

“I won’t deny I have a personal reason for pursuing this. Merrick’s team do not. They want to know how it works, and then work out how to replicate it.” The waitress arrives with their order, so they pause, before he continues:

“I’ve tracked the four of you through history. Even only going back the last hundred and fifty years, I’ve seen the good you’ve done in the world. All the people you’ve helped. And through this work, you could help even more, without the need for a gun in your hand. All they need are samples – blood and tissue and the like.”

“The others will never agree to this.”

“Just one of you would be sufficient, I’m told.” Booker pauses, pushing down the small flame of hope, the dream of a short drop into black, infinite, darkness.

“How long would it take?” Copley pauses, then.

“They’re not sure, yet. Once they’ve got the initial samples, then they’d know more. But you could leave, after those samples.” Booker snorts, knowing that is not true. But if it’s just him? Just the useless one, the forger disguised as a soldier? The others would get over it, he’s sure. They’ve known each other for millennia, near enough, whereas he has only been inflicting his presence on them for two centuries.

He sits, processing all of this silently, which Copley takes for a refusal, and so he says:

“Look, just think about it. If you change your mind, call me.” Copley pushes a card across the table at him with phone number written in neat letters, and stands, buttoning up his suit jacket, then leaves Booker sitting alone at the table. He waits until Copley is gone, then stands and makes to leave. Only at the last second does he snatch up the card, tucking into the back pocket of his jeans, before walking out into the heat outside.

He spent days, stewing in indecision.

He knew what Andy would tell him to do – tie it off, get rid of the loose ends. Even one person knowing about their existence was too big a risk to take – find Copley, kill him discretely, and make sure all of his research, however he found them, is destroyed, so no-one else can follow the clues.

But.

But.

Could it help people?

Could they make it stop?

This thought rattled around in his head for days. Quynh stayed quiet in his nightmares, held back in part by self-medication, always effective against her for short periods, but also by the uncertainty.

With no nightmares to wake him up at night, no mission to focus on during the day, the time stretches, loose and waning around him. He sits on his sofa, stationary for hours on end– what’s one hour, in the face of the decades he has lived? What’s a week, compared to the millennia that he might yet live, if Andy is anything to go by. That though – that is the thought that stills him. This existence of his – already distended further than any one person should live; his heart still beating, still obscenely pumping blood through his body, when the hearts of so many others – better people, stronger people – had stilled, silent forevermore.

Why me, he had thought, dangling from a noose with a broken neck as his hands lost and then regained feeling a hundred times in the freezing cold. Why me, he had screamed at Andy, when she came to collect him, crippled by his son’s grave, blind with pain and rage. Why me, he still thought, as he retched on saltwater and spat out bullets, carrying on fighting, always fighting. And– the quiet voice in the back of his mind, whispering to him every time he fell silent; _you don’t want this_. Any of this. Call it a gift, call it a curse – he’s never wanted any part of it, just followed where the others led and tried to help. The brief tastes of death and darkness, whilst his body stitches itself back together – that’s the part of this he craves, desperately.

In the end, that had settled it. And look how it turned out.

**Present Day**

He takes a swig straight from the bottle, savouring the way it burns down his throat, the brief pain a respite from the grief carving its way steadily through his chest, as it has done for decades now. His selfish – stupid – desires, for all this to end, for it to be over, and all he’s done is make sure he’ll be alone for eternity. Expelled from his family – because that is what they are to him, family, this curse tying them to each other as sure as blood ties – and left alone.

Days – weeks slip past. The only way he knows it’s passing is from the growing pile of empty bottles in one corner, which sometimes he works up the energy to clear out, dragging a clinking black bag to the communal bottle bank on the street corner. Then the timer resets and he starts over. Mostly he finds cleans clothes before leaving the house, sometimes he showers, but a fresh shirt and a five minute cold shower can’t hide the bags under his eyes and the stink of whiskey on his breath.

Some mornings, he wakes up clearer than he should, and the rasp of unwelcome breath in his lungs, the way his head doesn’t pound and his stomach doesn’t revolt, make him realise he probably killed himself last night, alcohol poisoning finally getting him. His thoughts stay clear for a while, letting him up to shower maybe, to eat something, but mostly the pain in his chest comes back all too quickly – Andy, bleeding out in front of him, Joe shouting his pain from across a sterile lab – it all comes rushing back, and the only way to make it go away is to swig straight from the bottle, the burn in his throat a brief respite. The taste of alcohol is a welcome difference from saltwater as well, and he dives straight back in to the numbness, hiding his selfish – stupid – desires for all this to end, to be over.

That’s all this has brought him, in the end – he wanted it to be over, and all he’s done is make sure he’ll be alone for eternity. 100 years from now, Andy will be gone (and that alone makes him groan, the thought of her gone forever), and he knows the others won’t take him back. Nile owes him nothing, less than nothing, and he can’t ever see the pain and betrayal in Joe and Nicky’s faces disappearing.

So that’s it – solitude, and unending life. Forever. He unscrews the cap on the bottle, takes a huge mouthful, and lets the burn in his throat take over, settling in forever.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words of fanfic I've written this week: 5108  
> Words of my PhD thesis I've written this week: 1007. 
> 
> Joke's on me I guess but this is way more fun. Plus no one writes such nice comments on my academic work! Keep 'em coming folks, it really does help :) 
> 
> Tags updated to be a bit more explicit - this chapter is the gnarly one, and I don't think there's anything beyond canon-typical violence, but shout if you think it needs anything else :)

He’s not sure how long he’s been here, now. Time slips away, not easily, each breath unwelcome in his chest, but still, it passes. He’s currently riding a wave, fuelled by some truly horrendous bottom shelf brandy that was the only alcohol left when he went in late at night a few days ago (two days? three? four? When you keep the daylight shut out and don’t have anywhere to be, it becomes very difficult to keep track.)

Even drunker than possibly any human ever (he’s not sure when he last died, but it feels like it’s been a while, at least), even exhausted beyond all measure, he tries to keep his outdoor excursions as controlled as possible, trying not to draw attention to himself. He visits every supermarket and corner shop in the vicinity, not going back to one place until he’s been everywhere else in between. He uses different IDs, different cards, pays in cash, varies what he buys and makes sure he isn’t anything more memorable than another sad drunk drowning his sorrows. Near on 250 years of watchfulness is hard to drown out, it turns out.

And so, as he leaves the supermarket and a man in a dark coat unpeels himself from the wall he’s been leaning up against, Booker is certain he’s being followed.

It could be nothing – probably is nothing. But it’s difficult to shake off the paranoia, difficult to relax once his pulse quickens, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up with watchfulness. He’s tired and hungover, slow and stupid, but that’s not enough to stop him from deliberately taking the long way round, running down a few alleyways and sneaking around corners, keeping going until he’s certain he’s lost his tail. Then he finally returns home, bottles clinking gently as he fumbles the keys for the front door.

He doesn’t venture out again for at least a week then, exhausted even from that brief effort. He stays in with the shutters closed, keeping out the daylight and the thought that someone might be looking for him. He thinks it over, over and over, and eventually convinces himself it was nothing. Just a coincidence. He doesn’t think about the way Copley definitely knew his address, definitely could have passed that information on – if he had slightly more of his wits about him, he probably would, would maybe think about relocating for a few decades – but he doesn’t. Doesn’t think of that, tries not to think about that, too tired and depressed to consider moving his sorry body elsewhere.

Instead, he focuses on his continued research into the perfect combination of alcohol and sedatives to try and keep Quynh out of his head, trying to sleep for a little longer, trying to chase extra minutes in the time he can be asleep before he wakes up, gagging and furious, the leftover rage from her imprisonment shaking its way through his bones. (It doesn’t work – the alcohol, the pills – it never does. It never will. But he’s still stupidly optimistic, still dreaming a fool’s dream, so he keeps trying.)

The next time he goes out to the supermarket though, he doesn’t even wait until an acceptable hour to go. Last night was a bad one – he stayed asleep for maybe 40 minutes at around 2am, before he awoke – this time it was a mix, both Quynh screaming silently underwater, but also the quiet gasp of Nicky as Kozak punctured his lungs once again with a needle, the look of pain on Andy’s face as an IV line was pushed into her, the point of intrusion hurting far more than just physically.

In lieu of sleep, he turned to exercise, forcing his lethargic body through several punishing rounds of press-ups, sit-ups, crunches, squats and pull-ups, sweating out pure alcohol to start with, but when his body finally started to tire, when his arms shake with the effort of holding himself up, he quickly showered to rinse the sweat out of his hair, and then lay down on the couch, too physically exhausted to move.

A few hours later, when his body has finally healed the damage, and most of the hangover, he heads straight out, too anxious to wait any longer for something to numb his exposed nerves. He takes a roundabout route, but there’s no sign of any tails, no one walking just slightly too far behind, slightly too curious in the shop windows when he turns, slightly too bad at tying their shoelaces when they wait. It’s really too early for anyone to tail him successfully, the streets quiet, so he stops checking when he leaves the supermarket (this one, a small shop, maybe a kilometre away from his apartment – he hasn’t been back here in at least a few weeks, and he manages to not fumble which ID, which credit cards he’s using here.) He heads straight back to – not home, never home, home was demolished in 1870s, a long time ago – back to the apartment, not delaying in his desire to get back inside, back in the darkness, back where it’s safe.

He manages to juggle his keys and the two grocery bags in his arms (he caved and bought some more food, not impressed by the roiling nausea and the trembling in his limbs, he should be able to go longer without food, easily), and if he were more alert, more with it, he might notice the new scratch marks around the lock, not caused by him and his shaking hands. If he were more alert, he might also have noticed the way his intruder traps have been disturbed – not set off, not deployed, but just … disturbed, ever so slightly.

It’s just another one of those things that slips through though, and as he sips the whisky, straight from the bottle, waits for a frozen pizza to cook, the only thing on his mind is how quickly he can get back the level of drunk he was yesterday when he managed to sleep for a few hours in the afternoon.

A few more days pass, in the dark at the end of a bottle. He jerks awake far too often, but he’s been here before and knows that this can’t be fixed. Can’t be remedied.

He dreams one afternoon of being stuck, the walls closing in and sealing him into an iron coffin – Quynh isn’t even a part of this dream, it’s just a regular nightmare – but as the air is pressed from his lungs, he starts awake, gasping for air and clutching at anything around him, trying to remind himself what’s real and what’s not. The walls of his apartment are too close for comfort though, after that, and so he forces himself up and out. He stands under the cold spray of his shower for a few minutes, an old bar of hard soap doing little to reduce the grime of someone who fundamentally does not care for themselves, then dries himself quickly, dresses in mostly clean clothes and heads out to a nearby bar.

A few hours later, he starts the steady stumble home, body slack and head pleasantly buzzed. He’s just on the right side of drunk, enough that his pain is quietly numbed, a sheet pulled between him and it, but still in control of his limbs, mostly.

He stumbles up the steps – maybe not that much in control – and fumbles the keys to get into the flat. Yet again though, his intoxicated brain is focused on other things, so it takes a good while to get the keys out, but this time, he’s drunk enough to not be solely focused on opening a bottle as soon as possible, so when the door swings open as he presses a key against it, his handgun is almost instantly out in front of him, retrieved from his waistband. His aim is fairly steady, despite the booze, something he has worked hard on, so he’s ready as he kicks the door open further, and he starts to clear the room, checking behind the door.

As he pauses for a second, taking a breath deliberately to steady his aim, there’s the smallest of noises behind him – he starts to turn, to bring his gun around, to shoot first and ask questions later, but then – a deafening bang – a blinding pain in his temple – blackness.

\--

Booker gasps awake, coming back from a death – he always has done, probably always will. It’s a dumb thing to do, to let the people around you know you’re not dead, but he’s never been able to stop himself, the flood of air into his lungs too quick to stop him from crying out as he wakes. Every time, a noise rips its way out of his lungs as the disappointment sinks in once more, as the blackness recedes.

This time is no different. He wakes, air flooding his lungs once again, a gasp of air escaping him as a cry without any thought. Straight away, he’s pushing and trying to move, despite the lethargy and the ache that’s settled into him since whatever happened. Leftover adrenaline surges through his veins, driving him up, but as wide straps hold him in place to the padded bench beneath him and he is stopped short almost immediately.

_No-_

The familiarity of the situation comes back to him far too quickly – the room is different, yes, the floor concrete instead of linoleum, the temperature cooler, the machines he’s linked up to a little less modern – but the straps digging into his body, the padded bench beneath him, it’s all far too familiar.

_No._

_Not like this._

He can move his shoulders a little, lifting his head up so he can see around him, and see the way the rest of him is firmly tied down. Short of somehow crushing a hand so it would fit through the bindings around his wrists, he is completely helpless ( _just like Joe and Nicky were_ ). He shouts in frustration, pulling against the straps – _please, not again_ – but there is absolutely no give in them, he’s going nowhere any time soon. That doesn’t stop him though, and he pulls and pulls at the straps, knowing his attempts are futile but trying nonetheless.

He tries to pull away for what feels like hours, but is probably just shy of one full hour, before there is a beep from a door in front of him, so he gives the straps one last tug to show a token level of resistance before focusing on the threatening number of men with guns come into the room, followed by … Her.

Dr Meta Kozak, the woman who claimed she’d be able to end infinity but in fact just caused an awful lot of undue pain and suffering to Joe and Nicky.

Booker stares at her, unflinching, despite the vulnerability of his current position, and pretends he’s not afraid (it’s not hard, to pretend. God knows, he’s been pretending for years. Today is just another character to play, another forgery to complete.)

“Hello again Sebastian.”

“I didn’t realise we were on a first-name basis, _Meta._ ” He emphasizes her first name, the word dripping with sarcasm, particularly irked by her use of his original first name. No one has used that name to refer to him in over 170 years, since he left his family, and this woman is not going to be the one to start that again. She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“So we meet again. Just you is not as good as all four – or five – of you, but you’ll do. Getting hold of your friends is proving to be very difficult. Not like the trail I found pointing to you, at least.” Booker doesn’t let it show on his face, but internally he flinches at the idea that somehow the others left a path leading straight to him. They wouldn’t.

However, at the blank look on his face, she carries on: “Oh, you think they would have protected you instead? I heard what they said to you when you were all in Merrick Tower. Surely you don’t think they’d want you back after that?” His face remains blank, but this time it’s harder, and he settles for focusing at a point over her shoulder, but that doesn’t stop her.

“Anyway. It doesn’t matter for now. All that matters is that you are here, and you will never leave. Not until I’ve understood every secret hidden in you, in your cells and DNA. We’re going to have some fun together, Sebastian.”

He spits at her, incapable of any other form of resistance right now, to which she backhands across his face. He stares back at her, defiant, as she nods at one of the soldiers, standing behind him, and Booker is only aware briefly of a pair of hands on his neck and jaw before his neck is broken and his world goes dark.

He wakes again, only to be conscious just long enough to feel the point of a needle going in, then he gags on foamy vomit, choking to death slowly. This repeats on, and on, and on, for what feels like hours but could easily be days or weeks or months, his perception of time completely screwed with by so much time in the dark. He wakes up, for what is possibly the tenth or twentieth or hundredth time, exhausted by the recovery from so much death, the gash in his throat still not quite closed, and Kozak is watching him. She asks;

“How do you feel now?”

“Fuck you” he gasps out, voice raspy but still just about unwavering. There is a scratch of pen on paper off to his right, and he looks to see a man, writing furiously on a pad of paper attached to a clipboard. Kozak sees which way he is looking, and adds:

“This is my assistant. Jonathan. I’m sure you’ll get to know him soon enough.” The man – early 30s, white, mean-looking in a way which suggests years of school bullying – looks up only briefly at the sound of his name, before going back to his notes. Whilst Booker is distracted though, he misses the way Kozak nods the guard standing behind him, and he flinches as there is the cold kiss of a muzzle against his temple, a bright flash, then – blackness, once more.

This repeats.

He is poisoned, stabbed, disembowelled, skinned and strangled. Every time she gives him a break, she asks some trifling question, to which he normally swears or spits or struggles. Sometimes he is left alone for longer – how much longer, he doesn’t know, the lights never dim in this room – and Kozak, or her assistant, return later, to begin again.

After every death though, he is that little bit more exhausted, that little bit more tired, in body and mind. His responses to Kozak become a habit, not quite as convincing as they were, but he doesn’t have the energy for anything more. He becomes hungrier and hungrier, thirstier and thirstier, until eventually he dies of dehydration, maybe two weeks in. After this, they start to feed him a foul-smelling isotonic drink through a nasogastric tube every so often, but it’s a long way off providing enough energy for his body to ever come back to normal.

Every time, Kozak and her assistant are there, recording everything about him, watching the way his muscles knit back together, the itch of skin as it closes time and time again. He loses track of time, just knowing that it is passing, feeling the slow tick of seconds like the pulse of blood through a bruise. His responses to her questions become whispers, then become non-existent, as his body fails to heal appropriately before he wakes, so he is left in pain for hours, feeling the slow knit of bone and tissue around the newly inflicted wound. It’s no longer possible for him to put up a façade of indifference, no longer possible to pretend he’s not scared, so he’s left with what was underneath – a coward, and a traitor, weak and unworthy.

It has been months, now, surely, since he arrived, and Booker has only really been paying attention to the fact his body is slowing down, every hurt taking longer to heal, driving him towards constant pain. However, he knows their research has been going badly. Kozak interrogates him, wanting to know why his cells cease to function outside his body after only a few hours, eventually shrivelling to nothing despite all her efforts, and he has no answers to give her. In her anger at being denied answers, she takes to gagging him every time he screams, saying she is fed up of the noise, often letting him suffocate on repeat for hours on end. The medical horror show has tipped from research into flat-out torture, Kozak looking dispassionately at his bleeding, raw body whilst her assistant is left to measure and record exactly how and when Booker’s body regenerates itself.

Time slips away easily, and every death takes him a little longer to come back from, his body pushed well beyond anything it was ever meant to cope with. The darkness, the emptiness, they’re what he craves, and yet every time he still comes back, his lungs still shuddering and his heart still beating. To begin with, every death is another chance, another hope, that this time it will keep and the blood will still in his veins forever. However, with every death, another small piece of a larger realisation sinks slowly into place. It comes over multiple days, weeks, months – he finds himself dreaming, in the short hours he is left alone, of breathing fresh air again, of seeing the others. Even if they did sell him out, or fail to protect him, or whatever it was Kozak was trying to imply, he would settle for seeing them at least once more, even if just from a distance. He thinks, at odd moments, of Nicky’s cooking and Joe’s laughter, of Andy’s dry humour.

He is rarely left alone entirely, so these snippets of daydreams take a long time to sink in, to coalesce into something larger and heavier that sinks through his chest, something even Kozak can’t dig out. Eventually, it settles behind his sternum, exposed to the air and hurting as she removes the left side of his ribcage, but it’s there. He realises, in a blinding instant:

_I don’t want to die here._

Not here, not with this doctor and her scalpel carving him open. Not without seeing his family again. Just to see their faces, alive and happy, would be enough. The realisation chokes him, and he coughs, flinching as he does from the feel of his side trying to regrow at the same time, but it stays with him.

_I don’t want to die here._

And so something in him changes – he no longer encourages the darkness, starts fighting to stay alive. Every time he draws breath once again, blackness receding to the corners of his mind once again, it feels like victory, whereas previously it has only ever felt like failure. Of course, it makes very little difference, Kozak still intent on pulling out every part of him, like a child pulling the wings off flies, trying to work out how he is put together – but the fact he doesn’t dream of the dark, the quiet, anymore is a warm weight in his chest.

He is rarely left alone, yes – but even they don’t watch him 24 hours a day. It takes time, but the warm weight in his ribcage ( _I don’t want to die here_ ) keeps him alert, even on the bad days. He waits, hoping for a chance – just a chance – to escape.

Kozak’s mistake – it’s been a long time coming, but oh, is he waiting for it when it comes – is to cut off his hand without securing him anywhere else. A beep on the phone in her pocket distracts her, and she gives her assistant direction on what to record whilst Booker’s stump of a wrist spurts blood over everything nearby. She leaves, and as the door slams shut behind her, Booker waits until the assistant leans in closer to film the way the blood vessels in his wrist contract, trying to stem the blood flow. In a swift movement, he slips his arm free and hits the assistant as hard as he can, knocking him to the ground and feeling grateful at the way his head ricochets off the side of the bench Booker is tied too, the way he slumps to the ground unconscious.

There are no guards inside this room – none of them had the stomach for it after Kozak had disembowelled him in the second week and watched his insides grow back over the course of the next two hours. The release of death had only kept him unconscious for the first twenty minutes; the rest of the time he had been screaming. Now though, their squeamishness works in his benefits, as it takes him several attempts to knock the surgical tray closer and tip it onto himself. Ignoring the way the blade slices at his lips, he manages to grasp onto a scalpel with his teeth. 

He works the scalpel through the bindings on his chest, then his remaining good arm, ignoring the way the blood and pain pulse through the stump remaining of his right arm. Finally – finally – he is free, and he slides to the floor, legs unused to having to support his own weight after all this time. The first time he stands up, he falls straight back down again, but then he stands, legs shaking but back straight. Whilst the assistant is still unconscious, he slits his throat and leaves him to bleed out on the floor without mercy. Any sense of mercy he might have felt has been long gone since the assistant had argued against using anaesthetic to keep him still when they took one of his lungs, for fear it might contaminate the samples.

He unhooks the access card from his belt, holds it in his teeth, then grasps the scalpel once more and stalks out of the room. One guard is waiting on the other side of the doors to the lab, but even as they look at the door as it opens, Booker is quick to go straight for the throat. They fall to the ground, blood spurting out, but he doesn’t wait to see them die, and continues onwards. He ignores the bloody footprints he leaves in his wake.

The next two guards he comes across put up more of a fight; he downs the first one quickly with a stab, but the second one manages to get a few shots in, bullets grazing his stomach and ribs, but he carries on regardless, snarling with pain but slicing wildly to stop them as quickly as possible. Whilst his attention is turned though, the first guard, clutching the hole in his throat, makes it up to a sitting position and fumbles before successfully pulling the alarm.

The blaring noise and lights make Booker’s head hurt, but he has no choice but to keep running, ignoring the itch in his stomach as the skin pulls back together, pushing the bullets out. His right hand is still bleeding, the re-growth slowed by all the other injuries in his body, but his grip on the scalpel is firm and he runs through the maze of laboratories, trying to find a way down and out.

Skidding around corners, he follows the signs for the fire escape and concentrates on both staying upright and holding onto his only weapon. The amount of effort this takes though means that he doesn’t hear the approaching noise from up ahead, around a corner, until he bursts through an open door and turns left, straight into the ambush. At least fifteen men are waiting for him, all armed with automatic machine guns, and as he stumbles, they unleash a hail of bullets.

His body jerks and rips with every impact, falling to the floor as they go for head and body shots to take him down as quickly as possible. He lands on his re-growing hand, and somehow, despite all the other agony, that still manages to lance pain through his entire body. It is short-lived, though, as a bullet drives itself straight through his head, killing him instantly.

Everything goes dark.

Time still passes, even if he is not alive to see it, and his body fights its way back to living. With a gasp, he wakes and instantly regrets it. He is tied down once more, more aggressively than before, straps cutting into his skin where they are drawn too tight, and this time even his head is strapped down so he is entirely immobile.

Every part of his body hurts. From experience, it doesn’t feel like there are any bullets left in him, just bleeding holes and the outline of a skeleton where his hand should be, but his body is too tired and hungry to heal anything quickly, so he’s left with the slow pulling back together of bones and muscles, the pulse of pain through his right arm and phantom hand rearing its head with every heartbeat.

More distracting than the pain though is the disappointment that sinks through him; if he’d just been a little faster, a little less distracted, he could have made it out. The warm weight of therealisation that he doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to die here, sinks through him to become a solid weight in the pit of his stomach; it’s no longer reassuring, just depressing.

The others would have made it, he thinks. They were all born to be soldiers, not just conscripted into an army for want of any better options. That’s enough to occupy his slow thoughts, and so time drifts away from him again. At the start, he used to count time by the heart rate monitor, listening to his own body clinging to life, but the focus required is far beyond him now. It’s enough to just lie still, watching the strip lighting above him, and let the disappointment consume him.

Later – it could be minutes or hours, time only monitored by the slow regrowth of his hand and the resealing of bullet wounds – the door hisses open, and he recognises Kozak by her footsteps towards him.

“You fool. You think you would have made it further than the elevators?” He continues looking at the ceiling, even as she comes into his peripheral vision. “And you cost me Jonathan. He was a good assistant. And all this for you to try and leave – haven’t you realised it yet? You’re not going anywhere. Stephen Merrick may not be around to see what he dreamed of, but I stand by what he said: I will carve slices off you for years to get what I want.” Booker does his best to ignore her, but apparently that’s not enough for her. She grabs hold of his jaw, and twists, even as his head is tied down, so all she does is yank his jaw around till it’s uncomfortable. “You will never leave this room.”

He makes eye contact with her briefly, but then looks away again, not willing to engage any more, but she clearly wants to drive her point home, so she switches back on the video camera that the assistant – Jonathan – had been manning, and begins to manipulate his regrowing hand. It’s still just a skeleton covered with a thin layer of regrowing ligaments and nerves, but the regrowth is enough that he feels every touch of her glove covered hands. The agony makes him shout, until Kozak tires of the sound and brings out the leather gag she’s so fond of. It doesn’t stop the pain, just making it harder to breathe, and he keeps screaming until eventually, he grows dizzy, spots forming in his vision, but Kozak doesn’t stop until the spots coalesce and unconsciousness takes him.

He wakes once more, an undefined period of time later, as his hand twinges painfully, the regrowing bone finally reaching the end of his fingertips. He’s been left alone again, so apart from the beep of the heart rate monitor and the whir of air conditioning, all is silent and still again. There’s just him, left alone to die, over and over, in the permanent fluorescent light.

He is so tired; tired of being cold, tired of being in pain, tired of being tired, and there’s no way out for him. The others won’t know he’s missing until he doesn’t turn up by the side of a river in just under a century. They won’t have any clues as to where he’s gone, just presuming that he doesn’t want to be found. And that’s if they even turn up - he can’t imagine Joe and Nicky forgetting their grievances that quickly. Nile might have wanted to let him off with an apology, but Booker can’t imagine that lasting for a century. Eventually she’ll be swayed. She owes him nothing, less than nothing, just like the others, and Andy won’t be around to say any different.

The tears nearly come, but he realises pretty quickly that’s he’s on the verge of being too dehydrated to cry, which is just about as depressing as it gets. Like a wounded animal then, there’s nothing else to do but close his eyes once more, and this time he hopes for sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Kozak carries on with whatever tests she feels like inflicting on him – taking more samples, removing more parts of him, only to watch them grow back. Everything takes longer these days, his tired body too starved, too broken to heal in any sort of efficient way, so he’s in pain for longer every single time. The only upside is he’s left alone for longer these days, Kozak certain that he poses no threat with the way he’s tied down so securely (she’s not wrong), and when he drifts off, it’s more unconsciousness than sleep, so his nightmares stay away.

One morning – Kozak turned up wearing a different shirt from the last time he saw her, but he’s no idea what time it is, really – she spends the first hour removing perfect circles of tissue from his forearm, then disappears again, into the backroom attached to this lab, presumably to spend the time cursing at why her research is going so badly. Booker still takes quite a lot of satisfaction in knowing that Kozak is no closer to an answer than she was when he arrived, even if it means she’ll probably never tire of searching for answers in samples she carves from him. The pain from his arm spikes through him when he twitches his hand, body tensing around the perfect circles of absent skin and muscles, but as soon as scabs start to form, the specific pain fades into the cacophony of other agonies in his body right now, so he detaches from the present once more, and fades into grey space.

  
Then – there’s a noise.

It’s beyond the doors of the room he’s in, and muffled, slightly, maybe a hundred metres away - through his tired, sleepy brain, it makes no sense.

All of a sudden – the door bursts open, and Andy walks in. She comes into his line of sight in a second, blood-spattered but whole and alive.

He frowns.

This isn’t normally how his dreams go. He has hallucinated the others, many times over. Normally gathered around him, disappointment clear on their faces, to the point where they don’t even have to say anything. He knows his inability to get himself out of this situation is his own fault. So when Andy looks at him, and her face shows nothing but pity, he is confused.

He’s aware he looks terrible, despite not having looked in a mirror – however many months of starvation and torture has stripped all the excess weight from his frame, and some more. Kozak only ever cleans the bits of his body she’s about to slice, impale, or remove; the rest of him is streaked with every imaginable bodily fluid, all on display after the paper-thin hospital gown had been removed in the first week for getting in the way. Most of him is blood-stained, grime has accumulated everywhere with how long he’s been stationary, and there are some foul yellow streaks across his chest after a deliberate infection, designed to see how long it would take him to either fight off or die of septicaemia (an hour to close the pus-filled slice in his skin, several hours to struggle through the fever, hallucinations and vomiting). (He tries not to think about how he saw his wife, his sons, how he cried for them and for himself, tears and snot threatening to choke him when he couldn’t wipe them away.)

However, he tries not to be offended, when Andy’s face cracks open in horror in his dream, that even a fictional Andy couldn’t find it in herself to be gentle. Her face gapes at the sight of him, the filthy skeleton he’s become. He sees her mouth his name, silently, nothing but pain on her face. Then he hears the door behind her push open, and the others file in to stand next to her – Joe, Nicky, Nile. All heavily armed, blood-stained, worried. He frowns, confused. This isn’t the way his dreams normally go at all.

Andy is frozen to the spot as the others file in around her, but then – a scuffle, to the left, as someone (Booker hopes Kozak) tries to run, but Nicky simply pivots on one foot, and shoots, just once, and there is the sound of a body hitting the floor. This breaks the spell on Andy, as she surges forward towards him, shoving her pistol into her waistband so her hands are free to cup his face. Nile stays by the door, keeping watch, whilst Joe and Nicky spread out, heading out of Booker’s line of vision.

“Book…” She leans her forehead to his, and he sighs. This is a pleasant dream, but he knows it can’t last. It’s almost certainly a new drug Kozak is trying out – none of the previous ones have ever contained opiates, but maybe she’s decided to give him something new.

There’s some movement, he can hear footsteps moving around (more than one, maybe two), but Andy fills his vision, fills his senses, and it’s so real, his eyes fill with tears. The thought of other people in the lab doesn’t even bother him, so sweet is this dream.

“Andy, we gotta go.” Nile’s voice, from near the door still, urgency in every syllable. Andy leans back from him, turning to briefly check in, then turns back to him and starts undoing the straps.

“Can you walk?” He nods as his head is released, allowing him his first movement in god knows how many weeks. The rest of his bindings are undone just as quickly, so he swings his feet off to the side and tries to stand. His feet can’t quite touch the ground, so when he slides off the bench, his knees buckle and he nearly falls, were it not for Andy catching him. This feels more real than his nightmares of late, but everything still has a dream-like quality to it, the presence of his whole family feeling far too good to be true. It’s a change from the usual though, so he figures he may as well try to follow through with it. Nicky returns from the corner of the lab, a bundle of clothes in his hands.

“You cannot walk out of here with your ass on show, Libretto.” Booker almost smiles, for the first time in a very long time, then promptly nearly topples over trying to get into the sweatpants, held up only by Andy catching him. He flinches slightly at the contact, body trained to expect pain, but Andy makes no mention of it, just helps him get his arms into the t-shirt, shoulders almost too stiff for that motion.

“Can you stand by yourself, Book? We’re going to have to fight to get out of here.” He nods, sheer determination fuelling his desire to stay on his feet right now. Too focused on staying upright, he hadn’t been paying attention to what the others had been doing, but a large crash brings it back to his attention. There is now a large pile in the middle of the floor of broken glass and – oh. Oh. All bits of him. Carved out and left in glass jars to rot. There is a murderous expression on Joe’s face as he douses the pile in ethanol, whilst Nicky throws what looks like an entire computer onto it. Booker blanches, looking away, so Andy takes the opportunity to press a handgun into his hand, and he remembers to grip just in time so he doesn’t instantly drop it. Beyond the pile, there’s a white-coat wearing body on the floor – it was Kozak. He stares at her prone corpse, blood pooling by her head, a precise shot by Nicky, and he can’t process any of the thoughts in his head, too distracted by the dream-like nature of this whole experience, so he’s grateful when his attention is wrenched away by a voice from the door;

“I think more bad guys are coming,” Nile says from her watchful position by the door where she’s stayed, aside from the occasional worried look towards both Andy and Booker. Andy checks with him, and says;

“Time to go, Book.” He blinks. This doesn’t feel real, not yet. But when Andy says jump, everything in his body tries its hardest to respond, so he tightens his grip once more, cocks the weapon and follows as she turns to leave the room. They amass at the door, just as they did so many months ago, except now Booker is the one streaked with blood, shaking but determined.

“We ready to go?” Andy asks. The others all nod except Nicky, who takes a moment to flick a match at the foul pile in the middle of the room. The ethanol ignites instantaneously, as Nicky turns back and nods his readiness to the rest of them. Nile rolls her eyes at the unnecessary drama, but follows Andy as she takes point.

There are men waiting for them, lots of them, with lots of guns, but even unassisted, Andy would be capable of wading through them all, mortal or not. However, the four of them have her back, and so dispatching the waves of men that comes towards them is mostly simple. They clear one room, then the next, then the next, one after the other. Booker trails behind, not confident in either his own abilities or his place within the group, but it means he can clear up what’s left behind, making sure the men on the floor stay down and out. They’re taking a different route to the one he ran, however long ago, for which he’s grateful, not quite ready to relive that day. 

It also gives him a new perspective on the four of them ahead of him – they’ve clearly put in a lot of time and effort into making sure Andy’s mortality is not a weakness to be exploited by anyone. Nicky, Joe and Nile alternate who is tasked with taking the shots aimed at Andy, each time coming back spitting blood and furious. Nile doesn’t yet have a sword, as the others do, but she has a knife which she brandishes with some gusto and considerable skill in her left hand when it’s free. Joe and Nicky are, as always, unstoppable, a pair of satellites around each other and - now - around Andy, so if any of the men are still alive by the time Booker gets to them, they wouldn’t be for much longer.

They reach the end of the room they’re currently in, and Booker can see through the glass in the door that there are stairs ahead (whether they’re going up or down, he’s no idea – he’s never learned whether he has been left high up in a skyscraper or buried deep underground). They pause, briefly, to take stock, checking in with each other with well-rehearsed facial expressions, not even needing to speak to convey _good, uninjured, ready to go_. They head up the stairs, clearing each floor as they go, a practised routine. There are no alarms blaring, and only faint noises from the rest of the building – the others must have done a very good job of clearing the rest of the place before they found him, for their exit to be this clear.

They only have a couple of floors to go, for which Booker is grateful – adrenaline and desperation are driving him for now, but there’s a finite limit to both of those things and he’s no wish to be even more of a burden on his family. They come out to a hallway, and with a swift nod to Andy, both Joe and Nicky disappear off to opposite sides. He watches them go, confused, until Nile says:

“They’re off to go rig the explosives. Time to make sure nothing of this exists anymore. We’re going to get the car.” Booker nods, slowly, then jolts into action as the other two start to move, simultaneously afraid they’ll leave him behind, or that they won’t, and he’ll have to go with them, face their judgement once again. Once they’re outside, the fresh air nearly stuns him, _this can’t be real, can’t be true_ , and this disappointment distracts him so much he nearly misses when Nile says;

“You both stay here. I’ll be much quicker if I can run, and there’s no way Book will make that.” He frowns, but knows she’s correct so stays quiet, and tries not to panic as she runs off towards what looks like a car park in the distance.

He watches her go, and tries not to focus on the way the fresh air in his lungs makes him shake, knowing that this can’t be real. This is a fever dream, has to be, something new he’s been injected with to make him hallucinate, to dream of everything he’s wanted for the last however many months. This realisation makes his legs, his hands, shake, which Andy – eagle-eyed as ever – sees instantly.

“You alright, Book?” He looks back at her, briefly, then looks away, the knowledge that this is a dream making her face no easier to look at. He murmurs, to himself, what’s the point in talking to hallucinations; “This isn’t real.” He looks at the floor, at his bare and bloodied feet, cold on the tarmac, but then he’s forced to look up as she grasps the back of his neck. Her hand is warm on the back of his neck, the first touch he’s felt in however long that hasn’t hurt – he flinches anyway, but she doesn’t let go.

“This is real, Book. This is real, we’re here, and we’re going to take you home.” He looks her briefly in the eye, but decides this isn’t a fight he has the energy for, so looks down once more. “We were so worried. You disappeared, and it’s taken us far too long to find you again.” He frowns, but is saved from responding by the revving of an engine as Nile pulls up in a silver car – modern, unobtrusive, the sort they prefer for getaways. Andy pulls open the back door, and gently pushes Booker into it, making sure he crosses over to the other side so there’s space for Joe and Nicky to pile in. Andy then shuts the door again (Booker is so very glad she was out of the car when she did that, she misses the way his whole body flinches at the unexpected noise), and climbs into the driver’s seat as Nile clambers across onto the passenger’s side.

They have only a few minutes to wait, before Joe and Nicky return as a unit from one side of the building, unhurt and satisfied, and they clamber into the car as Andy drives off, Nicky counting down, clearly waiting for a fuse to burn through, and thankfully they are already far away as he reaches zero and there is a whoosh of air, then a boom like a thunderclap as the roof is blown off the building. Joe and Nile cheer, then high-five each other, at which Andy makes eye contact with Booker, and rolls her eyes fondly. He manages a small nod in response, before looking away, knowing the judgement is coming next, and settles for watching out the window as they drive – not quite at the speed he knows Andy is capable of behind the wheel of a car, but definitely beyond the speed limit.

The countryside whips past as they gradually join larger and more major roads, until they hit the motorway and there stops being quite so many bends and corners to jolt all the passengers in the car.

Booker tries to stay awake, not wanting to dream, but the constant purr of the engine now they’re on a main road, and the contact point of Nicky next to him (the first prolonged human contact he’s had in months that doesn’t hurt) force his eyes shut in a matter of minutes.

He wakes up briefly when they stop at a gas station, but it’s only long enough for Joe to pull on a sweatshirt over his bloodstained and bullet-ridden t-shirt, then goes inside to pay. He comes back with a carrier bag filled with plastic-wrapped sandwiches, bags of crisps and bottles of water. A chicken sandwich is pressed into Booker’s hands, which he struggles to unwrap until Nicky helps him, his warm hands stopping his shaking ones, as he peels back the plastic for him. He wolfs the whole thing down in a few bites, and instantly goes back to sleep against the car door.

The passage of time escapes him yet again, but eventually, the car slows down, and Booker jolts against the door, waking up panicked, fumbling with the door as Andy parks the car. He nearly falls out of the back, legs still not used to holding his weight again, but the smell of fresh air helps, and he breathes deeply, sucking in deep gulps of it, trying to remember this feeling for when the drugs eventually wear off and he’ll be back there again.

The smell of rain and grass from the surrounding countryside floods his lungs, and he stands stock still. He looks towards the safe house - it’s not one they’ve been to recently, but he remembers this one for the low hanging beams all the way through the downstairs which are just low enough for him to bounce his head off, but for the others to pass under without ducking. The front door is only a few metres away, but it seems insurmountable; he sways on his feet as the exhaustion starts to really set in. Nicky comes round the car, and with a gentle hand on his back, leads him forwards, saying quietly;

“Come along Booker, you need a shower and then sleep.” The others pull bags out of the car and lead the way in, and the thought of being left behind is enough to start his legs into motion, stumbling but upright. He flinches, then mumbles an apology as Nicky guides him into the house with a soft hand on his elbow.

He makes it into the hallway, then slows to a halt, unsure of his place here. Thankfully though, that choice is removed from him, as Joe reiterates his need for a shower, and pushes him gently with a hand in the small of his back – up the stairs and into the bathroom. Joe sits him down on the closed toilet, before asking;

“You gonna be OK to shower by yourself?” Booker nods, then tries to stand up, pulling himself up on the sink, but within seconds his legs shake and he nearly falls before Joe catches him.

“OK, definitely not. I’ll be back in a minute, alright?” Joe disappears briefly, before returning with clean clothes, towels and a chair, which he stands in the shower. There is inconveniently no bathtub in this safe house, but thankfully the shower is a walk-in one, with plenty of space for two people, even when one of them can’t stand up.

He can’t summon up the energy to feel self-conscious when Joe gets him to stand up briefly to strip off the scratchy t-shirt and sweatpants that came from the lab, and just shakes on his legs until Joe guides him to sit on the chair in the shower. Joe pauses for a moment, before also stripping down to his underwear and getting under the stream of water – thankfully this safe house has warm water, which Joe waits for before gently rinsing off months of filth. The blood and dirt and all manner of other contaminants disappear down the plughole, but it takes several goes with a soapy cloth and the showerhead before Booker is anywhere approaching clean. He still has some open wounds – a stray bullet track along his left side, and the puncture wounds from this morning – which sting when the soap touches them, but he’s so tired, the pain barely registers before it’s gone, rinsed away with the water.

His hair is matted and clumped together at the back of his head, and the mess – which he doesn’t see, but he sees Joe winces, knowing this is the result of multiple headshots – is firmly fixed in his hair, so it takes Joe several goes to contains definite chunks of old grey matter and bone. Even with hot water and shampoo, it takes a long time to dislodge, to the point where the water is starting to turn cold again, but it’s clearly clean enough to be going on with, so Joe switches off the water and grabs the towels from where they are stacked on the counter.

Joe wraps one around Booker’s shoulders and passes the other one to him, but when all he does is hold it, he sighs, quietly, before using another one to dry him off, then himself, as Booker stares at the towel in his hands. To be warm and dry is … lovely, delightful, the best he’s felt in a very long time, but it also doesn’t feel … real. None of this does. So he continues staring at the towel, trying to focus on how it feels in his hands, but the physical sensation does nothing to ground him, thoughts taking too long to process in his sleep-deprived head. He jerks slightly when something pulls at his elbow, but it’s just Joe, trying to get him to leave the bathroom, so he follows, still holding the towel, shuffling across the slightly cold floor. Joe gently takes the towel from him, in exchange for a long-sleeved t-shirt, then another pair of sweatpants, then finally a pair of woollen socks, which he has to sit down on the edge of the bed to put on. Once he’s dressed, he looks up at Joe, who just says quietly;

“Time for bed, Book. Come on, under the covers.” He lies back, sinking into the mattress below him, and just about manages to tuck his feet under the blankets, which Joe then pulls up and over his shoulders.

He thinks Joe says something more, but his eyes fall shut and he doesn’t hear the gentle footsteps as Joe leaves the room, leaving the door slightly ajar as Booker drifts off into sleep rather than unconsciousness for the first time in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally things start to look up! Next chapter will either be super early or super late, depending on how much free time I actually end up with this week - I'm off work, but back with family, so could go either way! The next chapter is the one that needs the most work as well, so send hopes and prayers plz. 
> 
> Also I'm on tumblr (geeky-and-proud). Come shout at me on there if you would like to, I need more TOG friends :D


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